Anonymous Shimmer
by Zaedah
Summary: It’s concerning how the emptiness rushes back when he’s anywhere she isn’t.
1. Chapter 1

**Anonymous Shimmer**

She looks good in bar light. The neon tosses shimmers into dark hair, the robust volume sending urges to male fingers to test for texture. Above her stool an overhead lamp sets a glow upon sharp, exotic cheekbones and as if his contemplation stirs the skin, her hand brushes across one. He notices every breath and she is no longer unaware. And not unwilling; so says the shift in her gaze to him between every sentence she bestows on her eager date. Desperation for a numbing distraction colors the beer's flavor and he wonders if sufficient alcohol can deliver him into a moment his chivalry would normally disallow.

A quarrel is birthed in whispers and gains rapid momentum. The pub's population watches a too-young man storm away from the Latin beauty. But the quickly averted glances miss the pleased expression of a triumphant woman. Except him. The scheme had been fairly obvious and the result is a mile's worth of legs strutting to his end of the counter. A wink from velvet brown eyes has a pair of baby blues trailing her sway to the door. The bill is overpaid as he rushes out of the bar, finding the temptress waiting at the curb. The lift he offers is accepted with a slow, knowing smile. The plan is simple; take her home by way of his bed.

She looks divine on his sheets. And it feels like every fantasy-body-without-a-face known to man. There is no guilt when he buries himself too roughly into her namelessness. The varied inflections of her screams, oddly in tune, include no painful notes. A few long fingernails are split upon the flesh of his back but the drawing of blood cannot slow him. Intensity grows as stars flee the sky to sink into his vision. Convulsions afflict them simultaneously and he almost wants to know her name. While she calls out to God, his completion arrives with a curse.

Typically, when the weakness of flesh brings him to this moment, he cannot bear to see the face. All too often, there is none at all. Whatever features the stranger possesses are swallowed by those that his imagination prefers. Perhaps it can be attributed to the miracle of this woman's physical perfection, but for once his mutinous brain does not substitute exes or coworkers.

He sees only her. And he is intrigued.

* * *

She looks good in bar light. It is common for the available to take a position on stools at the counter. Couples tend to claim the tables, a combination of status proclamation and bragging rights. Their table announces their exclusivity, at least for one more evening. One night ago he spent great energy in exploring her insides. Equal exertion is being deployed to learning the outside, starting with her name. Lily and her robust hair and broken nails are a package from which he struggles to walk away. And he thinks that should mean something, even as he prays it won't.

This morning he woke to ten digits scrawled in thick red on the pillowcase. And a lipstick kiss-print that, for all the absurdness, made him want to hear the voice that accompanies those lips. Twenty-two hours after bone-jarring anonymous sex, the doctor and the designer introduce themselves. Little personal knowledge is traded but her hand on his thigh tells him plenty will be exchanged later. They favor the bar with their company for barely thirty minutes before she's pulling him back into the night.

She looks divine on her sheets. Sleeping on her side, her arms drapes across his stomach just enough to make her presence known while not requiring him to stay. It is freedom, this ability to have her without the bindings of law or emotions. But he knows the latter is becoming a lie. Still, they are using each other for appetites the lonely best understand and the thought compels him to study her face. Granting her remembrance provides him a measure of absolution and the more he sees, the more he wants.

And the more he wants, the harder he takes. That she doesn't mind his forcefulness strikes him as a plus on a mental list he's trying not to keep. The morning brings a new case and the prospect of death is softened by the cradle of her welcoming body. And he feels strangely refreshed when the second call shrills with the arrival of four am.

She kisses him goodbye. And he is entranced.


	2. Chapter 2

_Greetings to the few, the proud, the MI faithful. I'd always intended to finish this, though I know (Syd) that it went against all that we hold dear in Shippy-Ville. So may I carefully present the conclusion..._

* * *

**Anonymous Shimmer**

**Part Two**

She's become a distraction. It's only after the very public argument that this is apparent. He shouldn't have yelled at the low-level administrator, but having drones question his decisions turns his self-destruct dial to annihilation mode. When he seeks the mountain air and gulps down its chill to find calm, he realizes that it wasn't the man's ignorance that had set him off. He'd had a small window during which the nearest cell tower would bring him her voice and he'd missed it. Because the man wanted justification for a procedure that any first year med student would understand. And now a flying tin can would be carrying her to another continent. The sniveling suit's capacity to hear had been greatly diminished for the inconvenience.

All signs pointed to a long week. He can already feel the yearning build in places where she'd stamped an irrefutable claim. It'll make him crankier and there's a team full of good people that would have been safer for a little forewarning. Though the argument probably accomplished that. If only he'd have spoken with her, there'd be a tighter lock on his newly rampant emotions.

It remained a secret, though he thinks any suspicions would be well-hidden by his talented team. For all the attempts to smother them, the signals are leeching out of him. The grins for no reason and the increase of personal calls taken in the corridors speak of a life slowly reclaimed. But the shorter fuse with no provocation tends to coincide with an empty bed. Possessive, he's never been but is beginning to genuinely hate when her career calls her from their two-person world. It is unprecedented, the number of times he actually leaves the office and some nights bring a full sprint to seek her and the fulfillment of whatever need has consumed his day. Grinding through a case with an adolescent one-track mind is disconcerting but seemingly untamable. Many times he barely closes the front door before they collide with the wall and act out this obsession. She likes that his desire is so strong but it scares him that he'd be capable of becoming addicted to anything. Only it's unclear what he's dependent on; the woman or what she does for him.

As guilty as he feels for the way this relationship began and continues, he hasn't the fortitude to change it. Until he catches his pathologist shaking her head at him and though she can't know what he's doing, his conscience turns it into a verdict. So little is known about her beliefs, her goals, her dreams and the absence of proper knowledge eats at him. So he tells Lily they need to decide what they will be and her silence breaks him.

Except her joyful embrace says she's ready.

* * *

She's becoming a distraction. The scrape of cardboard pushed across hardwood floors is easy to tune out, but the broken glass does nothing for his concentration. Lily doesn't mind that he brings work home since it means she's free to interrupt with a massage. Her designer's eye has already determined the spots needing color and enhancement. Such decadent tastes has his lady and he finds he enjoys the corruption of his earthtone palate. It isn't the huge adjustment he expected, having her here at all hours and they celebrated fiercely when her condo sold. In every room of their newly shared abode.

He fills the townhouse with plants that will surely die under his watch, because he's learned that she loves them. Just as she loves life, in an exuberant, encompassing way that transforms the weary man he'd been into a being with matching energy. But only in her presence. It's concerning how the emptiness rushes back when he's anywhere she isn't. He'd missed his ex-wife when they'd been separated, first by cases, then by legality. But never like this. While the healthiness of such attachment is debatable, she's one compulsion that will be repeatedly indulged.

It's no longer a secret, though he wasn't the one to divulge his state of bliss. She had waited for him in the parking garage one night and kissed him methodically despite the interested faces in the windows. The tones of 'Connor's got a girlfriend' had been sing-songed under Frank's breath and everyone from his pathologist to his boss was sporting the oddest little smiles. A man caught, he was. Though he gently scolded Lily later that an open air peep-show was no way to introduce herself. And the flight to the next epidemic was wrought with tongues being bitten, as the team who lived for answers looked sideways to him for a few, which he was determined not to give. Privacy lasted to the end of the case, when he'd been summarily cornered and pressed for details with more puppy dog eyes than the city pound.

In time, he finds it easier to share. Because there is a reward system in place that slightly, almost, nearly makes up for the agonizing effort. A house filled with music and greenery and perfume and spices and laughter traces patterns on him with the warmest touch to create a home he's never had. It's a life with no expectations, no duty or requirements. This wasn't his marriage, nor any idea he'd ever entertained of how coexistence might be. When his child asks to stay the summer with them, he knows he's crafted something worthwhile. Because the eyes of an innocent see this as good. So it must be.

And when she proposes, he's never been more ready.


End file.
